The days where I yard work myself to a near stroke only a few times a year when the vegetable garden goes in/comes out are super over.

Every weekend, folks. Be jealous.

The days where going out to do yard work does not involve a pre-treatment, hooded Tyvek suit, elbow length gloves, full face coverage and an invasively thorough Technu post-treatment hosing off are over, too.

Strange that the gloves are what makes this scary.

These are the salad days for sure.

But - we are making just the tiniest bit of progress with the 5 acres of Bubba-eating poison oak, so there's that.

Before

After

And, while Bubba happens to be violently OFFENSIVELY allergic to poison oak, I happen to not be allergic apparently at all.

And...vomit.

Though I'm sure that now I say that, I'll die of poison oak inhalation or something stupid.

And I think you know that this was finally the moment we were all waiting for - GOATS.

Let me allow that to sink in.

GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSSSS

FOR FUCKING FINALLY, RIGHT?

And not because I somehow convincingly demanded it or looked extra pathetic or made some censor-worthy offers to Bubba - oh no.

IT WAS HIS IDEA.

Because of the almost dying twice of poison oak since we moved here less than a year ago.

But yeah - GOATS CAME.

And not just, like, one or two goats. NO, PEOPLE - 402 GOATS WERE AT OUR HOUSE.

And, for a few minutes on our road, and then for 5 munchy munchy days of blissful oak, grass and POISON OAK eating they were on our property doing their adorable, insatiable, bottomless-bellied bests.

I said, "This is the greatest thing I've ever seen" approximately 100 times. Every minute.

After they took the goats away (it was a sad day), we armed ourselves with The Poison Oak Station.

So, yes, this is a repurposed repurposed tool cabinet that some kid made (unsupervised, I'm thinking) in shop class that Bubba bought and cut up and welded back together to be the FrankenSmoker and then cut up again and then here we are.

Now it's, luxuriously I might add, lined with cardboard and filled with everything we need to almost hopefully probably if we're really careful not get poison oak while we use the Not Fucking Around tools to, basically, go to battle.

I mean, what even is this thing?

Brush ax. Kaiser blade. Sling blade. Take your pick.

We call it the Dothraki Death Blade because - I mean you can see why. It's kind of like a scythe crossed with a giant machete and bolted onto an ax handle.

And it FUCKING WORKS. For chopping shit back anyway. That's its main purpose. And we have a lot of chopping shit back to do. So, that's one tool we can't do without.

Then there's the super long tree saw with the hookey-loo that can snag the poison oak vines BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY ARE VINING and drag their oily asses out of the beautiful coast live oak trees and into the trailer BOOM. And then saw down the big fat trunks choking the shit out of the trees.

Except don't tell Bubba I called it a hookey-loo. I think he takes offense to the goofball names I apply to all his manly stuff.

And then there's the chainsaw to which Bubba has pledged his eternal soul.

Now, to be clear, we do not use the chainsaw on poison oak - that'd be crazy and would just spray noxious poison oak bits and blobs every old where. But we are also limbing up the trees and cutting up fallen limbs every other foot fall as we creep ever closer to the center of this property, so the chainsaw is a must.

And the trailer. He's a good boy.

And you may not think of it as a super Not Fucking Around Tool - but the rake is in there, too. The ratty old one that the former owners left behind. He can pull great wads of filthy poison oak down around your ankles in no time at all.

Makes me itchy just thinking about it. And I don't even get poison oak! Or do I...?